During a radio interview with Wayne Allyn Root, Nevada congressional candidate Danny Tarkanian defended civilians having firearms on the basis it could have prevented the Armenian genocide.

Root brought up former Supreme Court Justice John Stevens' recent op-ed, which argued for the repeal of the Second Amendment. The radio host told listeners he has a Jewish background and one of the first things Adolf Hitler did was disarm his future victims.

“I happen to understand that the first thing Hitler did before he herded the Jews into concentration camps to kill them was he passed, I believe in '38, a law that said no Jew could own a gun,” Root explained. “In the end, you’re powerless and defenseless if you have no gun.”

Root wondered why his Jewish friends, given their ancestry, continued to advocate for increased restrictions on firearms and Tarkanian also used his own background as an example of gun control enabling mass murder.

“I'm Armenian, and the Ottoman Empire ― they took the guns from the Armenians,” he said. “They came in and they killed 1.5 million of the two million that were there because they had no way to defend themselves.”

Root called it a “shared history” between the two cultures and reiterated that totalitarian leaders “always take the guns first.”

Tarkanian is currently running to represent Nevada in the House of Representatives and his campaign website calls the right to defend yourself a “God-given right.”